


Damned Spot

by orphan_account



Series: Supernatural Shorts [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comfort, Gen, Guilty Dean, Macbeth References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has too much blood on his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damned Spot

**Author's Note:**

> I got inspired to write this after re-reading a certain scene involving a certain priest in the manga Trigun Maximum (one of my favorite mangas _ever_ , and another series that deals with themes of morality and the nature of right and wrong).
> 
> I have no idea why I like writing guilty!Dean so much.

He's surrounded by whiteness, surrounded by bodies, and the weight of his sins bears down on him in a suffocating press.

This nightmare is new for Dean. The bodies – once claimed by demons, now dead by his hand – are arranged in a neat circle around him. He surveys them slowly, his skin breaking out in gooseflesh as he contemplates the lives he has taken. In death, the demonic influence over these people has been utterly extinguished. Here he sees a businesswoman, there a recent college graduate. A farmer. A mailman.

What were their names? Did they have families, people who would miss them? Were they mothers, fathers, grandparents –

He wants to scream, thinking about it.

He looks at his hands. They are soaked with blood: thick and coppery and damning. _Like Lady Macbeth. Out, damned spot –_

And then: _Oh god, so many of them I killed so many of them –_

He's vaguely aware of the flap of wings behind him, and without turning, he knows it's Cas. Cas comes not only when he calls, but also when he needs him. As he does so very much now.

Dean speaks with a calmness he doesn't feel _–_ not to explain anything to Cas (who already knows), but to himself.

"If you wanna look at it logically, I'm saving dozens of lives for every meatsuit I take down. But those lives... they're only hypothetical. They don't exist in the here and now." _I don't get to sit on the playground bench and watch the families, the_ _ **kids**_ _– not anymore._ "In the here and now, I only see the bodies. The murdered innocents. Not meatsuits. _People_." He pauses, and now his voice breaks. "They didn't deserve it."

"You wanted to save them too," Castiel says, reappearing in front of him, and it isn't a question. "You wanted to save all of them."

"Yeah... but I gotta be the strong one. For Sammy, for _everyone_. I have to be the one making the hard choices. And when I die – " Dean swallows hard. "When I die, I'm going right back where you found me."

"You can't save everyone, Dean." Castiel raises his hands and places them over Dean's, carefully. When Dean looks down, his hands are a soft, glowing pink – wonderfully whole and scrubbed clean. "You always did your best. And even when you didn't... our Father forgives all sins. There is nothing you can do to make Him love you less."

"You don't even know if the guy's real, Cas."

"No. I only have my faith." Castiel locks gazes with him. "But could you also believe, Dean, if I asked you to? At least for now?"

Dean thinks, the seconds ticking by like hours, the angel's fingers a beautiful weight in his hands.

"For you I could," he says finally, and he rests his head on Castiel's shoulder, counting each comforting heartbeat that drums against his chest, thinking of a salvation that will never come.


End file.
